So, I spent a week (and a few dollars) working away on Daz Studio to see if I could put together some decent looking characters for the covers of my upcoming Twin Stars novels. So far, I’m pretty impressed by how well it’s gone. Yes, there was a bit of a learning curve, but once I overcame that and learned a few tricks, it all came together pretty quickly. At it turned out, doing Tysen and Ping An was pretty easy, Esther has turned out to be the hardest one so far. (Which is why there’s still no picture of her I’m ready to share.) These aren’t intended to be cover images, just test portraits of the characters.

So, I’m thinking over changes I want to make to Twin Stars in the second draft of the story, and it’s mostly little things, but one thing that’s come up is the Nobles. I’ve realized that I haven’t done anything to physically distinguish my race of genetically perfected galactic overlords. They basically just look the same as normal humans, but are much more buff and perhaps a tiny bit taller as they’re currently described.

The problem is that’s not only a little boring, it also lacks a visual tag that the reader can say “ah-ha! that person is a noble” without me having to mention it each time a noble character is introduced. My first instinct is to just make them a lot taller and thinner than normal people, but I’m wondering if I can’t do something more than that. I don’t want to use weird eye colors, and in the setting weird hair-colors would be common anyways, unless they all have the same color(s) for hair. Tattoos are out because they’re so common as to be cliche these days. (I think the genetically upgraded bunch on the TV show Andromeda used tattoos as markers.) Distinctive fashion is a possibility, but I wanted something physically different.

Well, tonight after two long months of hard work, I have at long last completed the (very) rough draft of my first Twin Stars science fiction novel- right on schedule! I gave myself two months to complete it, and have done so almost to the day! What a long and gruelling experience this has been, and I now have more respect than ever for those who have completed a book! Two months of avoiding TV, movies, video games, and every other time-sucker I could think of to sit and write-write-write.

More thoughts on the experience later, as right now I need to go collapse into my bed and dream blissful dreams that hopefully won’t involve typing.

I’m in the process of novelizing (and finishing) my epic space opera Twin Stars. Twin Stars was my attempt to do an massive space adventure story in Audio Drama format, and I produced two seasons of it for a total of 20 episodes of full cast science fiction adventure. Thanks to my actors and some dedicated fans, Twin Stars was nominated for a Parsec Award, and my podcast has had over 250,000 downloads- the bulk of them people listening to Twin Stars.

I ended up stopping the show after two (of the planned five) seasons for personal and professional reasons, but the show stops at a natural breakpoint that isn’t the end, but could be called “the end of the beginning”. I want to finish it, but it will be in novel form, and that’s what I’ve been working on.

So now the question- should I bother to even try to market it to a traditional publisher? Or should I just go directly to the self-publishing e-book route? Or, should I try something in between like a small press publisher?

My concern with doing the traditional publisher route is that I’m not sure any of them will touch it because of the audio drama. They seem to be pretty skittish about works with a history, especially one which involves new media, and technically two fifths of the story is already available for free. (Although the novelization does expand on the audio drama quite a bit, and could be considered the proper version of the story while the audio drama was the rough.) I think this would make it a tough sell, and possibly waste time that could be better served doing the eBook route.

Of course, then there’s the smaller press publishers, who might take an interest in it and help it along quite a bit. Hmmm…Still working on the first novel right now, but these are the thoughts that are bouncing around in my head as I work.

With the release of Showdown (part 3), my audio drama series Twin Stars has finally reached it’s Book Two finale! Thanks to all who have supported this show so far, and Book Three will start to air in December after a much-needed break!

I (finally) got the 9th episode of Twin Stars Book 2 out, two months behind schedule and broken into parts, but it’s finally hitting the feed! Originally the story was to be a single episode, but when the first eight scenes of the show alone clocked in at 24 minutes, I knew I was going to have to break it down. So TS209 is going to become TS209, TS210, and possibly even TS211! It’s meant to be an epic space battle, and while it’s still condensed and filled with shortcuts, it’s definitely too big a story to fit in a single half-hour of show. I don’t even think it will fit in 2-half hours, but we’ll see what happens. The finale for Book 1- Hammer and Anvil was about an hour and a half long, all told, and I think this show will easily keep that tradition going!

Episode 48 of the Wander Radio podcast has an excellent review of Twin Stars by Alexa Chipman that is worth listening to. (I’d hire that girl as my head of advertising if I were making any money at this!) Of course, Wander Radio is usually worth a listen with it’s eclectic format of music, reviews and news, so go give it a try! You just might like it!

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About Me

Rob is a teacher, writer, podcaster, and blogger based in London, Ontario, Canada. He is a teacher at Fanshawe College, one of the hosts of the Department of Nerdly Affairs podcast, and the founder/producer of the Kung Fu Action Theatre audio drama group. He is married to his beautiful wife Connie, and owned by his dogs Winston and Penny.

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